Chris Keyser & Daniel Goldfarb Interview: Julia | Screen Rant
Julia, the new 8-part series from HBO Max, is the latest exploration of the life and times of Julia Child. Beloved by everyone who knows their way around a kitchen, and many who only wish they did, she popularized the concept of cooking shows and made complicated French cuisine accessible to all. But show creator Daniel Goldfarb (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and producer Chris Keyser (The Society) take the story beyond the confines of her cooking.
Though the first season of her public television show The French Chef takes up plenty of onscreen real estate, the series follows Julia (perfectly portrayed by Sarah Lancashire, Happy Valley) as she balances her newfound fame with her home life alongside loving husband Paul (David Hyde Pierce). She also struggles to relay her vision to the network, and relies on the support of producer Alice Naman (Brittany Bradford), best friend Avis DeVoto (Bebe Neuwirth) and editor Judith Jones (Fiona Glascott) to help her see things through.
The executive producers spoke with Screen Rant about the exceptional marriage between Julia and Paul that serves as the bedrock for the series, and the perfect casting that helped bring America's favorite chef to life.
Screen Rant: Chris, Julia Child has been an enduring figure in our culture for so long. What was it that drew you to exploring her, and what did you want to bring out of or expand on within her story?
Chris Keyser: First of all, she was part of my life. I was a child of the 60s, and I grew up watching her - not in a family that cooked. We didn't cook; we ate the way Julia taught us not to anymore. We brought in food and ate out of the can, but we watched her as a family.
Because, although I didn't understand it as a child, she embodied some things that people saw in her. The way she approached food was the way we should approach life, which is full of joy and without anything but a desire to live to the fullest; confident in yourself; okay with all of your mistakes. All of that stuff, I think, is what makes her last for us and what we're trying to embody in the show.
For us, though - and Daniel will probably want to talk about this too - we had a long time to talk about her. We had eight hours to talk about a little bit over a year in her life. That gave us a chance to take her, the Julia you know, and fill in the blanks that you don't know and talk about a whole bunch of different things.
That means talk about food culture and the meaning of cooking, obviously. But also about celebrity, about the rise of public television, about feminism and the other social movements of the 60s and into the 70s, and about the evolution of a marriage from something that looks like an old fashioned 1950s marriage - a good one - into a modern marriage.
She was a prism through which we could look at all of those things, surrounded in this very delightful package that makes it easy to watch. I think; I hope.
Daniel, you said that it had to be Sarah or nobody for the show. What made her the perfect fit for Julia, and how did you get her to transplant herself from England?
Daniel Goldfarb: Goodness, I don't know. She read the script, and she said she was in. We were very, very lucky that she responded to the material the way she did.
The way Sarah transforms is really Sarah's secret, in a way. We just got to witness it. Sarah is obviously one of the world's great actors, and known as one of the world's great dramatic actors. The tone of Julia is something a little bit sly; it's kind of a comedy, but it's also kind of a drama. What we needed was someone who had Sarah's authority and weight.
She's so funny, she's theatrical, and she knows how to go for the comedy. But when we needed a moment to land, she's a great dramatic actress. And I think really was our ace that we had; that we did not go for a comedian, and that we cast just a great actor who could play all the moments truthfully.
I love that we get a behind-the-scenes look at The French Chef, and it feels like episodes are being recreated. What was your approach to the public television production aspect? Were you going for more of a documentary or biopic feel, or did you settle on the narrative arc that you wanted first?
Chris Keyser: It's a nice combination of both. We did a fair amount of research on this, read everything that was written, and watched The French Chef as well. We had a whole team of people from our production who did the work to make sure that it was perfectly authentic. That was important to us.
And then we put that aside. Dan and I often talk about this as the Amadeus version of the show, which is the way Peter Shaffer talked about his play and movie. Of course, we didn't know what possibly happened inside those rooms. No one was alive then. But we stand by reading between the lines and intuiting what that life must have been, and that was the management journey we took.
We said, "What do we want to say about Julia? Who was the Julia you didn't know? How do you portray the uncertainty behind the moments that you didn't see with her and Paul? How did that woman transform?" Not in a biopic way, I think - not with any certainty that you would end up in a certain place, because Julia herself had no idea where she was going.
That's one of the nice things about this: that all of these people at WGBH, they were at the frontier of public television and the frontier of cooking TV, obviously. They had no sense of what goal they were aiming toward. She really didn't want to be famous, and she didn't want to make money. She just wanted to teach the things she loved. And we approach it the same way. Let's just set out on a journey where no one knows where it's going to end. But they earnestly - and sometimes, I hope, we slightly less earnestly - pursue their dreams, despite the natural odds of life.
That's what we did. It was well-underlined by research, but mostly a journey of imagination.
Daniel, I also love Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In watching Julia, I was thinking about how she's also a woman carving a niche for herself in an industry that doesn't necessarily want her at first. Is that a theme that you are drawn to in general, or was that an angle that you really wanted to carve out in Julia?
Daniel Goldfarb: I think it's a theme. I think I am drawn to underdog stories, and in period pieces, almost everybody is an underdog except for a certain type of person. And I'm also drawn to people that are extraordinary. Midge Maisel is extraordinary, and so as Julia.
So, absolutely. These are outliers; these are people that really make the most of every moment of their life. And it's just great company. It's great as a writer - I'm not even talking as a viewer - and it's inspiring to write people that inspire you.
Chris, I love the chemistry between David and Sarah. They really make the marriage feel believable and lived in? How did you both decide they were the perfect fit, and how quickly were they this comfortable with each other?
Chris Keyser: I have to say that both Sarah and David were essentially our only choices for the roles. Daniel wrote Paul for David; he was always who we had in mind, and we were lucky enough to get him. It was only because of the pandemic that he was free, so that was lucky. Sarah, I think we all agreed, was the only person who could play Julia. And they felt right for their characters.
But every time you make something like this, you take a leap of faith. Whether they were going to pair and feel like a couple or not, we just had to keep our fingers crossed about that. They ended up feeling that way. It was central to the story we wanted to tell because, I think as we said, more than almost anything else this is a story about the evolution of a love and a marriage.
They felt like a couple from the moment they got on stage together. That's due, I think, to their artistry and the fact that they responded to each other's skill. Let's be honest. I think there's tremendous respect between the two of them about what the other can do, both in comedy and drama. But in the end, like all of this stuff, no one had a conversation about how she was going to transform into Julia. We just said, "It's yours. Go do it," and she did. It works, and we're very lucky.
But there are plenty of television shows, as you know, where that doesn't happen. And we could easily have been here, in a moment like that. We just cast the best possible people, and they did the work that they are capable of and turned themselves into a couple.
Daniel Goldfarb: And they brought out really beautiful colors in each other. I think David, in a way, helped bring out some of Sarah's innate comedy ability. And I think Sarah inspired David dramatically. They found each other in the middle, and they're both doing something they've never done before. It's been really thrilling.
The first three episodes of Julia premiere March 31 on HBO Max, with one new episode dropping every following Thursday.